THE A^TIALE FISHERIES OF THE AVORLD. 



By Charles Eabot. 



[With 3 plates.] 



After a long period of decadence the whale fishery has again 

 experienced a considerable revival. In all parts of the world, at 

 the present time, this interesting industry is being actively carried 

 on, and, according to the Norwegian Fisheries Guzette (Norsk 

 Fiskeritidende) , not less than 20,000 cetaceans are captured every 

 year, so that the disappearance of these great marine mammals in 

 the near future seems certain. 



Never very abundant, the right whales, that is the Arctic right 

 whale, or Greenland whale, and the North Atlantic right whale, or 

 Nordcaper, of which the oil served to light the way of our ancestors 

 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and of which the whale- 

 bone was used to shape the figures of our great-great-grandmothers, 

 have become very rare. In our time the Greenland whale is not regu- 

 larly hunted except in Davis and Lancaster Straits, in Hudson Bay, 

 and on the northwest coast of North America about Point Barrow. 

 Even in those places it is no longer abundant. In 1910 the vessels 

 from Dundee, w^hich alone visited Davis Strait, took only 17 whales, 

 in 1908 and in 1909 about 15, so that in spite of the high prices paid 

 for the whalebone of this species, sometimes as much as $8,000 a 

 ton, the Scotch whalers were frequently obliged to abandon their 

 enterprise. 



On the northwest coast of America the Greenland whales appear 

 more numerous. No statistics of the fishery in this region are avail- 

 able, but the data now at hand indicate that the results in 1909 and 

 1910 were excellent. In 1910, one vessel harpooned 15 of these huge 

 cetaceans in this locality, and a second reported a cargo of whale- 

 bone worth $130,000. 



The second species of right whale, the North Atlantic right whale 

 or Biscay whale, is at present scarcely more abundant than the Green- 

 land whale. It was, indeed, believed to be extinct, when one was 

 harpooned near Iceland in 1888, and another the following year, five 



1 Translated by permission of the author, from La Nature, Paris, Sept. 14, 1912. 

 44863°— SM 1913 31 481 



